Only thing I’m not so sure about is if you can call bitcoin “radically free” yet. If banks are controlling peoples ability to purchase on an exchange, exchanges are requiring identification for purchases it doesn’t feel free. Most people don’t know how to purchase bitcoin p2p, actually most don’t even know there are platforms available to do this. There’s a long way to go and it seems like it will get worse before it will get better.
Something I’ve thought about a lot in the past couple of years:
Money is the one good that every single person uses. It’s one half of nearly every trade.
As long as the price of money is set by a centralized entity, a true free market is fundamentally impossible, because every transaction is influenced by price controls.
I literally just had to pull the car over to start writing: while listening nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe describe “lightbulb moments” (in the context of free markets and deflation), a lightbulb — call it a zap — struck me profoundly…
Unlike the fiat system, Bitcoin IS a free market for money. Meaning that in Bitcoin terms, “half the equation” is already resolved into a deflationary free market system. Even with governmental price controls on many products, because of how radically free Bitcoin is, it completely changes the nature of the trade.
What clicked for me was this: Bitcoin exists — it’s already here — meaning that, humans already, here and now, have the choice to operate/participate in a free market, where prices fall forever.
It’s not “when we reach hyperbitcoinization” or “when Bitcoin is legal tender” or “when adoption happens on XYZ level” (although all off those help to can grease the wheels). It’s already here, if you CHOOSE to measure in Bitcoin.
No joke, my mind was blown so fully that I had to pull over so that I could write this stuff down. Now that I did, I realized it belongs on Nostr 🫡
Back to the drive, and to the podcast. Thanks for keeping my wife and I company, nostr:npub1cj8znuztfqkvq89pl8hceph0svvvqk0qay6nydgk9uyq7fhpfsgsqwrz4u and Jeff 🙏🔥
Discussion
I hear that. I would offer that Bitcoin *is* free, in that one *can* use it freely and (more to my initial intention) the *price of Bitcoin* is a free market.
There will always be authoritarianism, censorship, and overly controlling centralized entities. In one sense, banks today don’t even have a choice but to control and KYC everything, or they risk legal issues.
Much of that will always be true; Bitcoin will continue to exist. And in existing, it is free, and we are free (knowingly or not) to adopt it.
Thanks for getting me to think harder about this 🙏✌️
Too true!
Also - tried to zap you but no Lightning address?